In recent years, the number of vehicles with “idling stop” systems which turn the engines off when stopping for a stop traffic light or otherwise idling so as to improve the fuel economy has been increasing. In such an “idling stop” vehicle, sometimes the compressor of the air-conditioning system stops while the vehicle is at a stop (while the engine is stopped) and therefore the comfort of the air-conditioning is decreased. Further, to maintain the air-conditioned feeling, sometimes the engine ends up being restarted even while the vehicle is stopped. Therefore, in order to maintain the air-conditioned feeling even while the engine is stopped, a cold storage function evaporator which gives a cold storage function to the evaporator of a refrigeration cycle system has been proposed in the past. According to this cold storage function evaporator, it is possible to store the coldness during vehicle operation and use this cold air while the vehicle is stopped.
Such a cold storage function evaporator stores coldness in the cold storage material by solidification of the cold storage material in the cold storage cases during operation of the air-conditioner compressor. On the other hand, during idling stop, conversely the solid cold storage material melts while discharging cold air into sucked air so as to keep down the changes in temperature of the sucked air and maintain the air-conditioned feeling until the cold storage material completely melts. In the case of sandwiching the cold storage cases which are filled with the cold storage material between refrigerant tubes, time is taken for heat conduction from the outside wall surfaces of the cold storage cases to the cold storage material at the centers of the insides of the cases, so inner fins are often disposed in the insides of the cold storage cases for the purpose of shortening the heat conduction time.
When arranging inner fins inside the cold storage cases for the purpose of shortening the heat conduction time, the cold storage and cold discharge performance is improved, but as shown in PLT 1, the problem arose that the end parts of the inner fins, the peak parts of the corrugated shapes, etc. adhered to the inside surfaces of the cold storage cases so at the time of filling the cold storage material, the flow path of the flow of cold storage material could not be secured, so much time was taken for filling.